


Spells Gone Rite:

by VladimirHarkonnen (TheLightdancer)



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Consensual Mind Control, Endless Family Dysfunction, F/F, Magic Gone Horribly Right, Overprotective Siblings, Quasi Rom-Com, Sex Magic, Time gives no fucks, poor decisions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/VladimirHarkonnen
Summary: Deborah bat Aphar experiments with a kind of tantric spell designed to  provide a new, experimental form of pleasure in the Fortress of Eternity. Expecting to summon Aphrodite she ends up summoning someone completely different, and gets a whole new outlook on life.
Relationships: Death of the Endless/Original Female Character
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue: His nurse some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole

_PROLOGUE, THE FORTRESS OF ETERNITY:_

Life, reflected Deborah bat Aphar with an old cliche that was well worn but nonetheless all she could think of after the preparations for the rite were complete, could go down very strange paths. In her own past, she had been constructed in another cliche of the literal dust of the ground, dirt and clay mixed into the form of a human body, outwardly and in the wake of her animation with organs within (and she did not appreciate certain...elements....nor the pain that came with them but that too was life). The entity that had done this had done this casual display of truly divine power, unlike others of her kin, and then given her complete freedom. 

She had chosen to become her familiar and her servitor, and yet if she un-chose this it was within her power and the being had other entities that fit the definition in a truer and a more real sense than she would. She was much a daughter as a creation. To be forged as life from the hands of one who could Unmake all that was or would ever be was to grant power in the liminal spaces where greater Magick dwelt. It granted insight and things that were and are beyond the walls of space and time, to perceive the ways that Magick worked.

As this was a ritual she wore a dress, one thinner and closer to the flesh for convenience, even if she could phase herself out of clothes as her mistress did she relished the idea of taking them off. She was bare beneath it, as a part of the ritual symbolism her mistress's non-human ancestry indulged in. In the exposure of the flesh there was purity, in a rite such as this one. The dress was simple by the standards of her creator's kind, with interwoven symbolism in turn, fringes marked with tassels that were short and yet gave her garments a fluffier element. She had a hood over her face, her skin pale, in an area between grey and white, her eyes black within black, pools of darkness in that otherwise-white face. Her silver-blue hair was bound in a bun, to keep it out of her face and her mouth. In her left hand there was an athame, one of her own making akin to that of her creator's kind, a dagger worked of metal from Urhalzan, iron and obsidian, the blade an alloy strengthened by spells that granted it a power to sever portions of atoms. It was a thing wielded here in a space of magick and meant to perform ritual ends, though in a battle it could be wielded as well to quite literally produce cuts of air that exploded with nuclear force from the sheer devastating power required to sunder atomic spheres.

Nothing of value lacked power to it, nor did power come easily as blinking or crossing streets. It was her gift from her creator to see the various types of energy that wove together into an ornate pattern, those of science and of magick and other things besides. She could see with greater perception to the deep truths, too, and knew how to wield what it was that she saw.

With that sight she had built a ritual space, taking time to construct a full ritual circle, marking it in the ground here in the Fortress where the metal was plastic and able to flow and to mould itself to an anathame. A set of symbols interlocked, some of her creator's origin (and among those was the ankh, the life-cross, a symbol worn in defiance of an aspect of her being and in adherence to it from another means of sight). Most were not, an interweaving element of Hebrew and Urhalzantrani and Arabic and Ottoman Turkish scripts in a calligraphic fashion, with the scripts within a pattern of flowing and interweaving bulbous shapes.

The circle gleamed, she had made sure that her mind was balanced. Even one shaped by those for whom the Stars Were Right dared not to call upon such forces beyond the veil without a great deal of caution, for to those to whom greater power was give came greater consequences of error.

Too, this was a distinct kind of rite, she was pondering a mystic pregnancy with her own love, her girlfriend accepting of the idea in theory if somewhat uncertain how a golem who fought and slew monsters and served as the willing eyes and ears of a being around whom Existence itself was anchored, one of many tens of thousands of such entities, and one such as she could achieve such a feat. Deborah snorted. Baseline humans were such strange creatures. Willing to entertain ideas so long as they were stories but make them real and the ideas suddenly became this eldritch and terrifying concept.

She took a deep breath and steepled her hands, her eyes closed as she began to draw upon the power that surged with her and through her, and a low droning sound echoed in the air, the very molecules seeming to vibrate and split, light sparking from her eyes and in the veins along her arms, and then into the blood vessels of her hands. Her pale flesh, white as snow, was illuminated with a brilliant golden-greenish light that shone more brilliantly than true light, and did not bend nor arc with time and space, seeming more akin to stabbing it.

The vibrations and the droning increased as she spoke words of a tongue of power, that which is known in some worlds as Enochian and in others as Enuncia and in still others as the Tongue of Heaven. To the children of Urhalzan, of whom one had created her as the God of her people had made her own ancestors from dust and clay and life's breath, it was called the Tongue of the Heavenly Kings, though its words were not as those pronounced by a mouth that was human, or as hers was, one that seemed to be. The words were spoken with a guttural reptilian aspect, slamming into the air with a brutish power. She envisioned the kind of entity she wished to draw to her rite, a being of perfect beauty, one that strode the elements of life and death, love and hate.

One of the kinds of beings that was fairest of them all, a deity of love and understanding and compassion. She had never entertained this kind of concept before, to summon a goddess of love, and to seek such a pact as this but it would be one pursued with greater delight, not lesser.

The words of power echoed with a terrific sound that smote the world around it, light growing and then pulsing in a pattern of brilliant white and the interlocked Nothingness around and within and through it. A last word of command and then the light and the nothingness flashed into the greatest brilliance and a being walked out into the circle or fell from the energy summoned at the same time, finding herself on her knees.

She wore a formal skirt that was all the same sheer, long stockings going up to her upper thighs, her outfit transparent and revealing a black bra that stood out against flesh as pale as her creator's. Her hair was as dark as her creator's too, though it lacked the blue stripes like those of a tiger that threaded through the goddess that had made her and made this fortress. It was dark, the flowing darkness of Night itself, seeming to flow into the shadows in the fortress and yet to surpass them. The entity was on her left knee, right leg clenched, her hands on the aforementioned knee, the nails on those hands long, like claws. Around her neck and between her breasts was a golden chain or what looked like gold, and to it was hooked an ankh of silver, a vision that marked a point of division of what came before from what came after.

Her right eye had an Eye of Horus, but her eyes....they were endless darkness, a beauty that was like a singularity where a star became too dense for its own weight and became a great maw in the core of space itself, devouring light and all else with it. She served beings that weighed a multiverse as a mortal would a marble and treated them accordingly, of her own will and was accustomed to staring them in eyes that glowed like stars down to halos and prominences, a light that cracked darkness and true-light alike. To beings that smote the world around them and whose very presence in a universe tilted its physics and metaphysics down alien paths.

She knew power, and knew it well. She also knew of the Goddess Aphrodite to the Romans and Venus to the Romans, the Morrighan to the Irish and Freyja to the Germanics, to know that what she was looking at, who she was looking at, was no Aphrodite.

She looked at the entity kneeling in her circle with her head tilted, the bemusement palpable.

 _ **Well,**_ the kneeling entity said, as she remained kneeling. _**I have to admit, I did not see this coming.**_

Deborah bat Aphar remained puzzled. **_I thought I summoned a goddess of love and compassion, who could and would bring life into being where there was none or no prospect of same._**

Death of the Endless smiled warmly. **_You did,_** she smirked. **_Oh wait, let me guess: You thought you'd see Aphrodite, didn't you?_**

Warily, Bat Aphar nodded. 

Death laughed with a silvery musical tone to it, a sound that was beautiful and that seemed to weave itself into the metal of the Fortress and into this room within it.

 _ **Ol' Venus is a lot of things but she isn't compassionate or loving.**_ **_She makes people love, but she's wrathful, vengeful, very self-absorbed. Death's lip quirked slightly. Not exactly my favorite kind of person and I've had this happen....a few times. People think the love goddess loves and then they end up summoning me._ **

Her smile became broader and her eyes traversed Bat Aphar's body appraisingly.

 _ **You're like Diana!**_ The phrase was warm and Bat Aphar raised an eyebrow.

She held up her hands.

**_Do you see a bow and arrow? And I can assure you I am no virgin and cannot turn people into a dog if they see me bathing. Well, technically I do if horndogs count._ **

Death laughed. _**Not that Diana. In my worlds where I come from the Amazon Queen Hippolyta wanted a daughter of her very own, so she built a body from clay and at the bequest of the Gods of Olympus I breathed life into her. So if you want someone to help you get to accepting things, I'll gladly do that.**_

She raised herself from her knees, remaining in the circle.

 ** _It's a lovely sensation this,_** she said, wrapping her arms around herself. **_Summoned to help one who wishes to realize a truth to do it, and to do so entirely willingly and yet bound by a pact._**

Bat Aphar raised a finger. _**I haven't sworn to a pact yet.**_

Death snorted, looking at the circle around her. **_You didn't do all of this because you were bored._**

Deborah Bat Aphar's finger tapped on her dress. 

**_The pact I wish to make is a simple one. I intend to be the one who conceives and bears an offspring with my girlfriend. She does not believe it so, were I to have a blessing from an entity of love, one that she would recognize, she would accept it. She would know of Aphrodite, and....._** she paused for a moment. **_She would know of you. She's...obsessed with a series of....panels on a page, you see._** For a moment embarrassment crossed her face as Death laughed again.

**_So, if it would please you, O Eldest Sister of the Seven Endless, who were before the eldest gods and will outlive the last of the stars, I would work a blessing with you in a rite linking flesh and call upon that power. I did anticipate summoning the Goddess Venus for this but...._**

Death spread her hands and arms out and for a moment there were great wings at her back with endless golden eyes with brighter yellow sclera, golden irises, and pupils dark as night, each blinking in unity in a perfect fashion. It was beautiful, and there was a connection in those golden eyes to the Angel Azrael, of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic myth and especially that of Islam, as well as to the being that made her. A soft smile crossed her at that sight, as the Endless nodded. 

**_I will do this._ **The Endless smiled.

With that the athame moved and traced a set of symbols and they moved and flowed like water, as if Moses held his staff and parted the Red Sea. From it stepped, in feet clad in soft loafers, the entity that was summoned to that sphere, and she stood before her summoner.

She moved her hand gently to the summoner's cheek, feeling skin that reminded her achingly of the being she considered her own daughter as much as Hippolyta's, as Iblis O'Shaugnessy was her son. It was soft to her touch but then everything she had ever felt save one being had been. And that one had permitted the touch for a time and she still bore the scar for when she did not read the body language swift enough to react. She knew that it could withstand the deadliest weapons of science without ill effect and weave between the courses of magic as simply as a hummingbird flitted between meals.

She knew much more than she let on, for those eyes of endless darkness hid great knowledge and with it great pain, for in the harvesting of knowledge there was pain to be had, and in the endurance of reality in a manner that made her at one remove more than her siblings or anything in her world and at others much less, in her own view, and in her secret heart of hearts. Her siblings truly lived and lived each choice the first time in ignorance of the deeper truths (save poor sweet Del and what she had seen drove her from Delight to Delirium). She endured a cycle that all her choices could not defy and waited until each ended and returned, for it was the price of her function.

With such experience and such knowledge, deciphering the nature of the being whose cheek she caressed at the start of the pact was simple to obtain, a small sweet smile crossing her face.

 _ **Well,**_ sighed Deborah bat Aphar as she removed her hood and a flick of her wrist caused hair that was a mixture of silver and blue that shimmered and gleamed with each color depending on where and how one looked and was never consistent, **_shall we begin?_**

Death's smile became more anticipating and she gestured as a chair formed and Bat Aphar followed her hand gestures to sit. Death was going to enjoy this to the fullest, and she hoped her summoner would too.


	2. She wears an iron vest:

_Deborah bat Aphar's bedchamber, the Fortress of Eternity:_

To the Endless, who were more truthfully concepts than people, their clothes were as much a part of them as what appeared to be flesh. It was armor and it was elements of who they were as beings, aspects that in their own right were worth in the eyes of mortals equivalents of what in blood magic terms could be gained by offering an entire world as a burnt offering, or in terms of rituals by appealing to the Ones Beyond who could grant astronomical power, if not without repercussions. When he had led his function Destruction had taken this concept most literally of them all (and it was his great failing, that, to take literally what was more truthfully meant to be metaphorical). He had worn great suits of silver armor ornately marked with glyphs of occult symbolism with his massive Claymore at his side. A weapon impractical and unwieldy for a true human yet in his hands a force unrivaled, the thing that made stars enter her sphere.

She had always regretted that she was so close to Dream when Destruction's sphere marched much closer to her own and what had sustained it.

Thoughts that flitted through her head as her shoes, artfully kicked aside, were followed by her unclasping her belt, and putting a seductive look into her eyes.

She had never done anything quite like this, yielding to the concept of what was in mortal terms, the control of her mind. She had thirsted after novelty and made quite a mess in the process in one concept of seeking it. Here, it would be simpler to actually try, she reflected, as she slipped the belt out and slipped it with a flick of her wrists, gyrating her hips as the silver-haired golem looked at her with a strange, rapt desire in her face. She almost expected to see her golden-eyed sibling with the two shadows there but Desire was, curiously enough, absent. To be fair this was a tantric rite at the one hand but at another remove clinical, so she wasn't sure which of her siblings' spheres it fit into if any.

She placed her hands behind her head, black lips parting with her teeth shining a bit in a friendly smile as she moved her hips gracefully, her hands moving and whirling as she did, moving as a blur. Her hands moved to the clasp of her jeans and she unzipped them next, lacy lingerie visible. It was tempting to pause here, for for all her actions in other spheres and in other parts of a being who transcended any one multiverse, it had a certain strangeness to it to yield control even temporarily. To willfully take herself out of what was as much armor and part of her very being as anything else, to be truly bare and to do so on behalf of a rite like this, for this specific purpose.

The hesitation was for only a few seconds and it had her suspended on the toes of one foot akin to a mortal ballerina, and then her hands moved and she found herself flipping herself over in the air gracefully, her wings taking that moment to materialize again, her jeans slipping off of her and then flipped aside with a kick, as she landed with a semi-bow, her posture showcasing cleavage and getting a graceful moment of applause from the golem with her gleaming eyes and silver-white hair. She flushed, a small tinge of soft pink entering her cheeks, giving her a surprisingly mortal aspect, but then resumed her spins and her gyrations, the golem's eyes traversing her.

She had only been in the Fortress twice in between the long sequences of universes, for it was a relatively new thing. Unlike that _other_ realm she had entered unwisely and escaped by the skin of her teeth. It was unlike other headier dimensions, but it was not unlike them at other levels, the metallic element of the floor feeling surprisingly warm and welcoming and not the cold iron aspect she would have expected. It felt good against bare feet and though she did not truthfully have a body at one level, she felt a bracing coolness of the air against her skin and shivered deightfully as she went back to teasing with her top, raising it to showcase her belly and a small portion of the strapless bra she had on beneath it, savoring how the golem's body seemed to tense.

She didn't deny it, she had made herself undeniably beautiful even at the dawn where she was icy and stiff and cut off from mortals. She had been lonely, then, haunted by the weight of her function. And it did bear down on her heavily, for even an immortal, perhaps especially an immortal, who was tasked to be the friend to all who needed her and the one who would outlive all else could not endure countless universes' worth of the collective scorn and fear of mortals without it biting into her. She had made herself beautiful because often it was the only beauty to be found with who she was and what she was. Her siblings were so distant to her, bar Dream and Destruction. Her parents still more than her brothers, sisters, and sibling.

If not even her family found anything in her worth loving then she could only find it in herself, and so she had become an archetype of beauty beyond Desire, Diana of Themyscira, or other entities who could rival that. Love Goddesses appealed more strictly to the animal parts of mortals, so did those they blessed. The rawness of Life, as her function, writ into a work of art. She was beyond that and she was a part of it, but it was seldom that anyone, even her other lovers of the past looked at her with this kind of rapt, truly personal awe. It was always 'Death', never the idea of her as a person.

She flushed again, dropping her top and then unclasping her bracelet, looking at it and seeing the sorcerous energies that shone, the obsidian hue drinking in power around it. In the Fortress it was oversaturated, her eyes having a problem focusing on it and she recognized her clothes reflected this too. Then again it did make sense, those who were choosers of the dead did reinforce each other's natures if it got to a point.

She flicked the bracelet aside, too, and then teased the golem with more movements of her top before removing it and gracefully spinning to place it neatly on her jeans, leaving herself clad in her lacy sheer lingerie, meant to be revealing and to incite the lusts and desires of the visions of mortals, if any had ever opted to try. None had. If they saw her it was in the course of her duties and she seemed to be a creation of her dear brother's, or it was in the course of her duties and her beauty drew them to her and to the journey to the immense infinities of the Sunless Lands and what occurred in the gloom that was imperceptible to all eyes save hers.

Her smile intensified further as she reached up to unclasp her bra first, making a point to lean forward slightly in a seductive sense, the flowing darkness of her eyes and hair drawing the golem's gaze and then the motions of her hands, swift and strong, likewise. Swift motions and then she was clad only in her panties, things that in their darkness drew a contrast against skin of bone hue, calling attention to her dips and curves. She was slender, nowhere near so buxom as Desire in xir feminine moods nor even as Despair, and in truth as Del aged up to her next phase, she was becoming less so even than her youngest sister, no longer a child and poised to reach true maturity as the youngest of their brood.

Others might have felt a further slight against things there but Death did not, her hands at her side with her palms up, smiling broadly. Her body was hers, as her siblings' were theirs. Each fitting in its own ways to the tasks for which it was assigned. She was Life as she was Death, by the breath of her mouth that which was inanimate knew what it was to be, and to Exist. Bare feet rested against metal that was soothing and welcoming, full of life. Not golden emptiness and gilded tortures that made the hellscapes of Uxas's twisted nightmare seem welcoming by comparison.

She slipped off her panties last, bending over and letting the golem's eyes be drawn. For a moment she hesitated again, biting her lip. The old inadequacies that had surged in flashes of half-formed thoughts and emotions and visions of memories appeared again and then she heard the golem making a sound akin to a breath. She did not truly need to breathe any more than Death herself did, so the recognition of appreciation made Death flush again and grin with a silly smile on her face, before sliding off the panties and then holding herself for a moment, quietly.

She heard the golem moving, and knew that she was unclad much more swiftly with a simple magick of the kind that the sort of entities that made this place used for convenience.

A chin brushed against her shoulder, soft and yet unyielding iron, and arms slipped around her that were only a shade darker than her own but to mortal eyes each almost identical in paleness if little else. She shivered at the embrace, at how welcome it felt, at how much the secret parts of her that none of her siblings saw craved more of this, and why it was such a heady thing to lay with those who wanted her, and who welcomed her as the being she appeared to be and not the one she was. With something like this that was more....she did not let herself use the phrases 'prostitution' or 'sex work' even if it were so, because the intimacy here, however ultimately hollow it was seemed cheapened by that.

Part of her vowed after this that she would spend time not on her job but simply seeing things in her various days and in elements of her knowledge. To think this way of people was unbecoming of her and part of the many ways the long complex of deeply internalized self-loathing at living too long had done such terrible damage, and she was working on changing. Part of her hated that even with the mind control she could not resist her jaw wibbling slightly and some tears flowing at simply being held by another who wanted her, but when the other woman simply dried her eyes and said nothing, holding her and letting her assert control of herself, she felt more relieved.

The nature of the pact meant that the ritual was formed from the unions of the flesh, but it was not a magick that would rely on choice one way or the other. It would be wiser for all of existence were it so on the part of the sorcerer or sorceress who worked the magick, but with those who sought to summon spirits for such purposes, within the bodies of mortals or in those spheres that permitted it, empirically visible and touchable, such was not always the mindset of those who gained such power to wield it with wisdom for the possession of power was mistaken as more than it was.

The silence, the embrace, the delicate kiss on her shoulder all signified an understanding that surprised her.

So did the quiet mental empathic questions as the hand around her waist slipped lower, asking for permission and letting Death dictate the pace. This too had not quite been so, and it was something that made the biting anxiety within her ease, and she slowly relaxed at the graceful loops of Bat Aphar's hands as they dipped down, along her striations, and then one of them cupped her between her legs, starting to rub and caress along her lips, as she heard that breathing again.

 _ **Beautiful even here**_ , the golem's voice echoed in a silky fashion. It was lower, now, and breathier, giving her warmth at recognizing that the desire was real. ** _Such beauty from one most fitted to have it. She who is Life in all its hedonistic and bloody aspects of becoming itself should be lovely, and she who is Death should be achingly beautiful such that the soul knows peace._ **

The hand moved away from her and Death let herself breathe at the same level as she saw the glistening juices on the entity's finger, and then the golem took it in her mouth, the slurping surprisingly noisy (and she wondered what the saliva of a being made of magick would be like, would it be like mortal saliva? Like the substances produced in certain kinds of dimensions where sensual energy had its potency and its metaphysical warp and weft to a point that even moreso than otherwise the carnal things were first and foremost? Like candy?). The golem hummed in pleasure.

And then with a casual demonstration of her mystical skill she levitated Death in the air and bound her with magick of her own, wire snaking out and around her wrists, and along her arms and extending over her head in an ornate set of trefoil knots and what was and wasn't akin to barbed wire and rope formed around her. It formed around her legs too, clenching them and spreading them, sustaining itself in mid-air in yet another display of skill. The golem stood back, looking at her work of art and then leaned in to give Death a deep kiss, and Death found out just what her saliva was like after all.

It was addictive, with a honeyed element with a small element of cinnamon to it, something she greedily took and welcomed with the golem's tongue overwhelming hers, the sound of their kisses audible, as the being's hands slid down to squeeze her ass and squeeze it tightly before slipping away, and then grinning as she lowered herself between Death's legs.

 _ **You are my guest and my aid, so it is only fair that I give this to you first,** _she said, as her voice thrummed against Death's pussy, and then with a wide grin on her face she leaned inward and her lips parted and her tongue slid out and Death's eyes went very wide at the sensations filling her. The knots around her wrists, along her forearms, and her clenched legs, her knees and her thighs and parts of her calves and shins began to gleam and she realized just what magick filled them and felt excitement and trepidation.

The slight pink flush deepened and became a much deeper red one, the red standing out against the bone-skin and the hair of stygian hue that nothing of science could match, and she let herself moan freely, enjoying herself as her eyes slipped to half closed and she sank in, letting herself be free.

\----------

Destruction of the Endless snorted good-naturedly at the process of the archaeological dig. Ever since he'd taken in his younger sister, and worked to clean up one of his messes....and retaken his position in not one but two separate smaller portions of his being when his sister's troubles had nearly sundered his family irreparably, the rest of him had made a decision. If he was not to actively wield his function at a cosmic scale he would at a smaller one, for as the other Endless were duality, he was Creation as he was Destruction. And what better thing to start this than archaeology, than scarring the ground to uncover the hidden bones of history?

Here, as an extra element and one that gave him the slight acidic edge of just knowing who would be popping up soon and when, this was a dig that risked disturbing something best left alone. Exham Priory had been destroyed in the 1930s, following the revelation of horrific cannibalistic acts and the still more deeply hidden rift that connected it to that primordial place that he had glimpsed only distantly and which had drawn him here. In truth he was not certain what, if anything, he could do if they did uncover more beyond the deformed skeletons and the products of the terrifying magick that relied on the insane ravings of a terrible shard of the Ten Thousand Face King-Queen at the center of nuclear space, or if they found the rift.

But it would be a damned sight better to do so with Destruction itself at their side than to gamble on it without it. The only superheroes that could have been trusted with this were involved in deeper affairs, in a renewed mess of Oa and the latest stirrings of Uxas and Izaya in their renewed eternal war.

He had expected to see his brother when he felt that pulse of familial energy and gritted his teeth, preparing to explain to Dream why he wasn't interested in yet another appeal to what had been so just because his counterparts in minor enclaves of a vast sphere had done things. When he saw the being who was his physical mirror in all save having a massive red beard that went halfway to his stomach and seemed too oversized to be real, clad in clothes of finest green with elaborate symbols that were never consistent, and knew that the being's sphere stood still and would remain so until events had passed, he stared in stupefied shock.

**Dad?**

Time smiled at his son.

_Destruction, my favorite son._

Why are you here?

_There is to be a conclave of the family, all save the Exile._

He gritted his teeth slightly. He was the one who'd left but his father only referred to their sister by that name, even to her face. He had not called her daughter since a parting much more bitter than his from his siblings.

_Destiny usually calls such things. He calls them and I don't care. I do not count myself among them unless necessity requires me to do so. Family, yes. Function, no._

**Destiny did not call this one.**

Time's smile was now that of a withered greybeard with a hunchback and clad in a robe of infinite darkness, a great scythe in his hand. With eyes that glowed like stars and the aura of age and of decay about him he seemed much more the mortal vision of death than his elder sister could ever do even in the few cases of her terrifying anger, even in the small portion of reality where she had chosen anger and wrath rather than hedonism as her reaction to her own changes.

**I did. And as your father, you do not get to disobey my summons. You, all of you, save the Exile are truthfully equal in one way or another to each other. Not to me.**

Destruction bit his lip again.

_Very well, father. I'll come with you._

Time smiled coldly and then looked at the priory, now a youth and a seeming child but with eyes far too ancient to make it convincing and a deep basso man's voice that no child could have truthfully claimed.

_Your little dig here will remain paused in time until you return. And worry not, son. Even if my eldest has too much a stick up his arse to tell you, what lies beneath there is not beyond you. It is a little thing, and were Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos to seek to gather Forsaken Souls by some silly tantric rite or renewing drawing the damned here to the cannibalism beyond the tantric rituals it would fail._

Time snorted.

_If nothing else your brother's stories would make it so. _

He growled.

_As is, I think he'd probably amuse himself in a world like this by dressing up as a Batman Who Laughs or a Plot Contrivance on the Morrison Scale with some convoluted nonsense about how even we are products of stories as if the wise have not known this all along._

And with that Time was again the grey-bearded liver-spotted cadaver with flesh and an over-wide grin and then the haft of his scythe collided into the ground and in a sudden flash of lightless energy Time and his son were drawn to the meeting hall of the Endless.


End file.
